"....the "A" word...."

Fifty years.

That should be the mandatory minimum.

Tell you what and why shortly.




Not long ago, John Carter Cash uncovered, "among a huge stash of Johnny and wife June Carter's effects," the master tapes for an album his father recorded in the early 1980s but never released. The album, called Out Among the Stars, will finally come out in March, and, according to Rolling Stone, it features duets with June Carter and Waylon Jennings.

The first track to be released is "She Used to Love Me a Lot," which you can hear below.

For country fans, for that matter for music fans, the arrival of a "new" Johnny Cash album is obviously a pretty noteworthy occasion.

And, regardless of your particular musical tastes, preferences, et al, there's no reasonable argument to be made in opposition to the observation that this guy, among a very select few, deserves the title "legend".

If, for no other reason, because he contributed his country music artistry to the culture, and the world, for fifty years.

And even now, ten years after his passing, the interest in his past work continues while the excitement about "new" material is considerable.

Legend, indeed.

In fact, I'll go you one better.

Artist.

A word that, for the loose change in my portfolio, gets doled out far too often with far too little criteria, a term that almost automatically becomes an adjective in front of the name(s) of almost anybody who manages to get a song recorded and/or made available to the masses.

No matter the song.

No matter the singer.

No matter how much it actually matters.

Johnny Cash mattered.

And matters still.

As for the latest, the newest, the hottest, the "greatest"....

Here's a thing.

Get back to me in fifty years.

When there's buzz about new material of yours being discovered.

When your fifty career has come to an amazing, poignant, stunning, once in a lifetime conclusion.

Like this career did.

Then we'll talk "artist".

Till then, listen...and learn.